The problem with hoaxes

If I had to pick the one thing that makes my job as a skeptic the most difficult, I wouldn't pick credulity, or ignorance of science, or even our tendency toward confirmation bias.

I would pick hoaxers.

I detest hoaxers.  The problem with a lie (which, let's be clear, is what a hoax is) is that once told, you've already accomplished three things:

1. You've damaged your own credibility;
2. You've suckered some people who probably will never find out the truth;
3. You've made it that much harder for the people who are actually interested in studying what you lied about to do research.

Take, for example, two hoaxes I ran across just in the last week, one (in my opinion) far more terrible than the other.

The less damaging one is a video, allegedly out of Blackburn, England, of a creepy "apparition" chasing a car.  Here's the YouTube video:

The video is admittedly creepy, with the slouching, white-clad figure shuffling along, its long hair swinging as it moves.  And it has all of the hallmarks of the "ghost encounter," the panicked chatter of the people in the car, the "ghost" coming toward them as if it wanted to steal their souls, and a scary backstory about an executed monk in nearby Turton Tower.

The problem is, of course, that it's a fake.  It's already been identified as part of a student film, clipped so as to make it look like a real encounter.  But this hasn't stopped the video from gaining over half a million views, most from people (to judge by the comments) who thought it was 100% real.

Far worse, in my opinion, is the hoax perpetrated by a boy and his family, just uncovered last week.  A boy named (I swear I'm not making this up) Alex Malarkey was seriously injured at age six in an automobile accident.  Upon waking from a coma, he told his father, Kevin Malarkey, a Christian therapist from Ohio, that he'd gone to heaven, where he'd met with and talked to Jesus Christ, as well as having a scary encounter with the devil.  Alex's story was turned into a bestselling book, The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven, and it buoyed up the faith and hopes of countless people who wanted desperately to think that there is an afterlife.

The bubble burst a few days ago.  Alex, now 16, released a letter, which (in part) reads as follows:

I did not die. I did not go to Heaven. 

I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention. When I made the claims that I did, I had never read the Bible. People have profited from lies, and continue to.

He goes on to say that he's still a staunch Christian, and that he thinks everyone else should be, too; but the damage is done, I think.  Bookstores have, by and large, pulled The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven from the shelves.  Understandably.  The only other option would have been to shelve it under "Fiction."

You have to wonder what Kevin Malarkey will do with his ill-gotten gains.  It's probably too much to hope for that he'll give it all to charity, but that's certainly what he should do, given the circumstances.

I get asked frequently, as an atheist, if I think it's possible that there's life after death.  My answer usually is, "I'll find out eventually."  I'm not just being flippant; it's the only possible answer when there's no hard evidence one way or the other.  Of the claims I've seen, there certainly haven't been any that have convinced me.  But falsehoods like the ones told by the Malarkey family muddy the water further, making all of us more likely to look at any claims of an afterlife with a wry eye.  Maybe some tales of ghosts and spirit survival and near-death experiences are true; but given the human propensity to lie, I'm perhaps to be excused if I don't give any of them much credit.

So to the Blackburn ghost people, and to the entire Malarkey family, and to anyone else who has created a hoax, and made it more difficult for truth-seekers to find what they're looking for, I have only one thing to say:

The twisted history of religious conspiracy theorists

Following hard on the heels of yesterday's post, about some Muslims in Algeria who claim that attacks by purported Islamic terrorists are actually being carried about by magical shape-shifting Jews, we have a second, competing claim, from over at the site Bibliotecapleyades:

Islam itself is a hoax, and Muhammad and the Qu'ran and the rest of it were inventions of some evil Jesuits in the Vatican.

I would like to tell you that this is a spoof site, but I'm 99% sure it isn't.  Here's how they begin their argument, if I can dignify it by that name:

A Jesuit cardinal named Augustine Bea showed [Alberto Rivera, a Jesuit priest working in the Vatican] how desperately the Roman Catholics wanted Jerusalem at the end of the third century. Because of its religious history and its strategic location, the Holy City was considered a priceless treasure.

A scheme had to be developed to make Jerusalem a Roman Catholic city. The great untapped source of manpower that could do this job was the children of Ishmael.

The poor Arabs fell victim to one of the most clever plans ever devised by the Powers of Darkness.

Augustine Bea, by the way, is quite real, and was a scholar in biblical archaeology as well as being a powerful Vatican insider (he was, for a time, confessor to Pope Pius XII).  But his biographical details mention nothing about his being part of a grand Muslim hoax conspiracy.  Not that they would, of course.  Because these things have to be kept top-secret, you know, so secret that no one would ever find out about them unless they Googled "Cardinal Bea Muslim hoax."

Bad Bad Cardinal Bea [image from one of the inimitable "Chick Tracts"]

They go on to say:

Early Christians went everywhere with the gospel, setting up small churches, but they met heavy opposition.

Both the Jews and the Roman government persecuted the believers in Christ to stop their spread.

But the Jews rebelled against Rome, and in 70 A.D. Roman armies under General Titus smashed Jerusalem and destroyed the great Jewish temple which was the heart of Jewish worship - in fulfillment of Christ's prophecy in Matthew 24:2.

On this holy place, where the temple once stood, the Dome of the Rock Mosque stands today as Islam's second most holy place.

Sweeping changes were in the wind. Corruption, apathy, greed, cruelty, perversion, and rebellion were eating at the Roman Empire, and it was ready to collapse. The persecution against Christians was useless, as they continued to lay down their lives for the gospel of Christ.

The only way Satan could stop this thrust was to create a counterfeit "Christian" religion to destroy the work of God.

If this is true, Satan sure is a procrastinator, because between the destruction of the Temple and the founding of Islam was a little over 500 years.  You'd think that being the Prince of Darkness and Super-Evil Bad Guy and all, he'd have gotten right on that.

So anyhow, there are all sorts of writings, the author says, that show that Muhammad was basically a no-count Arab trader, and that the Muslim conquest of the Middle East was encouraged by the pope.  Why?  Who knows?

When Cardinal Bea shared this information with us in the Vatican, he said: "These writings are guarded because they contain information that links the Vatican to the creation of Islam."

Both sides have so much information on each other that, if exposed, it could create such a scandal that it would be a disaster for both religions.

In their "holy" book, the Koran, Christ is regarded as only a prophet. If the pope was his representative on Earth, then he also must be a prophet of God. This caused the followers of Muhammad to fear and respect the pope as another "holy man".

The pope moved quickly and issued bulls granting the Arab generals permission to invade and conquer the nations of North Africa.

From what I've read, the Arab generals didn't give a rat's ass what the pope did.  The pope granting them permission to conquer North Africa would be a little like a guy whose house is burning down saying, "Okay, okay, if you insist.  Go ahead, I give you permission to burn."

Anyhow, what earthly purpose would the Catholics have to conspire with the Muslims?  Apparently, it was to stop the missionary work of true Christians:

As a result, the Muslims were allowed to occupy Turkey in a "Christian" world, and the Catholics were allowed to occupy Lebanon in the Arab world. It was also agreed that the Muslims could build mosques in Catholic countries without interference, as long as Roman Catholicism could flourish in Arab countries.

Cardinal Bea told us in Vatican briefings that both the Muslims and Roman Catholics agreed to block and destroy the efforts of their common enemy: Bible-believing Christian missionaries.

My question, non-historian that I am, is: what Christian missionaries were around back then besides the Catholics?  Okay, there were various weird sects, Arians, Monophysites, Docetists, Ebionites, and a whole bunch of others whose names escape me at the moment.  But they were mostly small and not very influential, and got the crap smote out of them at every turn by the Catholics for being heretics.  The point of this article, honestly, seems to be that American bible-toting Christian fundamentalist missionaries were being persecuted in the 7th century.

If you thought that a jump of 500 years between cause and effect was a lot, now we jump 1,300 years, all the way to the early 20th century.   Apparently, during the intervening years, Satan and the Vatican et al. must have been taking a long siesta.  But once the year 1910 rolled around, they were mad as hell and weren't gonna sit around and take it any more:

The next plan was to control Islam. In 1910, Portugal was going Socialistic. Red flags were appearing and the Catholic Church was facing a major problem. Increasing numbers were against the Church.

The Jesuits wanted Russia involved, and the location of this vision at Fatima could play a key part in pulling Islam to the Mother Church. In 1917, the Virgin appeared in Fatima. "The Mother of God" was a smashing success, playing to overflow crowds. As a result, the Socialists of Portugal suffered a major defeat.

Roman Catholics worldwide began praying for the conversion of Russia, and the Jesuits invented the novenas to Fatima, which they could perform throughout North Africa, spreading good public relations to the Muslim world.

The Arabs thought they were honoring the daughter of Muhammad, which is what the Jesuits wanted them to believe.

As a result of the vision of Fatima, Pope Pius XII ordered his Nazi army to crush Russia and the Orthodox religion, and make Russia Roman Catholic. A few years after he lost World War II, Pope Pius XII startled the world with his phony "dancing Sun" vision to keep Fatima in the news. It was great religious show biz and the world swallowed it.

Not surprisingly, Pope Pius was the only one to see this vision.

Because isn't that the way visions work?  If lots of people see something, it's not called a "vision," it's called "reality."

So anyway, there you have it.  The Vatican of the 7th century didn't like the depravity in Rome in the 1st century, so they invented Islam so as to stop Portugal from becoming socialist in the 20th century, resulting in Pope Pius XII sending the Nazis to conquer Russia.

Makes perfect sense.  All we need is to add some magical shape-shifting Jews, and we'll have all of the batshit insane bases covered.

The right to criticize lunacy

At what point are you allowed to say, "That may be your religion, but it's completely insane," without being accused of crossing the lines of propriety?

I ask the question because of a comment made by Pope Francis that many are interpreting as implying that the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists brought their deaths upon themselves. "You cannot provoke," the Pope said.  "You cannot insult the faith of others.  You cannot make fun of the faith of others."

Okay, I admit that it's not nice to do something deliberately that upsets people, but other than that, why should we place religious faith outside of the reach of criticism?  What if the "faith of others" is completely absurd?

For example, consider a story that appeared a couple of days ago in The Times of Israel, which describes a reporter who traveled in Algeria, asking people who they thought were responsible for the Charlie Hebdo massacre.  And apparently the response she got was:

The attacks were done by shape-shifting Jews.

Illustration from Goethe's Werke (1882) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

"Many Muslims in north Africa," Dana Kennedy said, "are of the opinion that Jews staged the series of terror incidents to make Muslims look bad... (and) that they weren’t just regular Jews that were doing this, but in fact but a race of magical shape-shifting Jews that were master manipulators that could be everywhere at the same time."

Oh, those wily, wily Jews.  Creating such convincing personae as Cherif and Said Kouachi (the gunmen responsible for the Charlie Hebdo attack, who shouted "Muhammad is avenged" after killing the twelve staff members) and Amedy Coulibaly (the self-proclaimed member of Islamic Jihad who killed a policewoman and four civilians in separate attacks, and who deliberately targeted Jews).  

And their response to all of this is that the attacks were by Jews impersonating Muslim terrorists?  What, are the Jews also the ones who are beheading people in Syria right now?  Is it Jews who are responsible for flogging, hanging, or beheading people in public because they've been found guilty by a criminal justice system that would have seemed unfair to Tomás de Torquemada?

I dunno.  It seems to me as if the Muslims are making themselves look bad enough without any outside assistance, from the Jews or anyone else.

And to Pope Francis I would say: if you are not allowed to criticize ideas freely, then how are you supposed to combat ideas that are batshit insane?  Is anyone allowed to claim anything, free of repercussions, because it's under the aegis of faith?  How can he not see that treating "It's my religion" as a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card is tantamount to giving license to lunacy of all kinds?

So while Pope Francis has certainly met with my approval over some of his statements, that encourage dialogue and ecumenism rather than rancor and recrimination, I think this one is ridiculous.  We have to be able to point out the absurdity of beliefs.  Without that freedom, there is no filter for telling fact from fiction, reasonable claims from insanity.

Shape-shifting Jews, my ass.

I know I've said it before, but it's important enough that I'll reiterate: I'm all for treating people with compassion.  We all come to understanding by different roads and at different speeds, and most of us are striving to figure things out in whatever way we can.  But there is no such requirement that we treat beliefs as if they could have their feelings hurt by criticism.  Beliefs stand and fall by the same criteria as any other sort of claim; by their agreement with facts and evidence.  Without that standard for acceptance, you are adrift in a sea of wild conjecture, without a touchstone for reality.

Home town ghost-hunting and squatch-seeking

So I'm excited to tell my loyal readers that I have two opportunities for doing some first-hand investigation.

These sorts of things don't come along often, given that I live in a rather remote corner of the universe.  My house gives new meaning to the word "rural setting."  My nearest neighbors are cows.  I live, no lie, near the original "Podunk."  Yes, Podunk, New York is a real place, and it's just down the road.

Which means, of course, that I'm so rural I don't even live in Podunk. I live in the suburbs of Podunk.

So since hands-on inquiry of paranormal claims requires that there be people there to make the claims, it's not going to happen often around here.  And just in the last week, I have two opportunities, which, believe me, I'm gonna jump on.

The first came my way because of the peculiar experiences of a friend, who lives in the neighborhood on the other side of Podunk ("Podunk Heights").  Now, let me assure you right out of the starting gate that she is an eminently sensible person, down-to-earth, not prone to flights of fancy.  She and her husband bought a house a couple of years ago, and moved in with their two children, who are now three and five years of age.  And not long after they moved in, the children started to report strange stuff.

Both kids have said that they've been awakened in the middle of the night by "people."  Sometimes the people stare at them, sometimes they're walking around in or past the kids' bedroom... but sometimes the people actually make physical contact.  Just two nights ago, she tells me, her younger boy woke her up crying, and when she went to investigate, he said that someone had touched his neck and scared him.

Being a skeptic and a rationalist, my friend wondered if it could have been his blanket or pillow, or an edge of his pajama collar, or something like that.  She said to her son, "Was it a light touch, like something brushing your skin?"  And the little boy said, "No, it was a hand holding the back of my neck."

So at this point, my friend understandably freaked out a little.  She told me about it, since I'm sort of the local skeptic, and the suggestion arose that perhaps I could do a little bit of GhostBusting.  There are now apps you can download that do all of the paranormal investigation stuff -- detecting electromagnetic fields, making digital recordings of sounds (so as to pick up EVP -- electronic voice phenomena), and so on.  At first, she said, she was fairly reluctant to try this kind of thing because she was afraid of how she'd react if something showed up.  But given that her kids are having some kind of experience every week or so, she's decided that she may just give it a try.

So I might be called in to do some supernatural sleuthing.  My son, when he found out about this, was psyched, and says he'll be happy to join me.  This is a good thing, because despite being a skeptic, and virtually certain that we won't find anything, I'm also a great big wuss, so if there really was a ghostly manifestation, and I was alone in a dark house, I'd wet my pants and then have a stroke.  Having Nathan around will, one would hope, make this a less likely eventuality.

Now, allow me to reiterate; I have not gone all woo-woo.  One of the reasons my friend wants me to check this out is because we're both rationalists, and are pretty well convinced that the kids' experiences are the results of vivid dreams or night terrors, not hauntings by the Restless Spirits of the Dead.  Whatever happens, it'll be fun, and certainly worth reporting the results back here.


Not quite as close as Podunk is the little village of Newfield.  Newfield is about a half-hour's drive from my house, though, so it's still in the neighborhood, as it were.  And a friend of mine sent me a news story that tells of an encounter a couple of days ago between a Newfield man and Bigfoot.

The story comes from one John Swaney, who was out hiking with a friend in the Connecticut Hill area, west of Newfield, when they heard a terrifying sound.  Here's his account:

It was around 8.30 a.m., about an hour till daylight, an hour or an hour and a half.  We heard a noise... You could hear kind of a woosh!, woosh!, as if you are going through frozen grass.  That’s when we saw it, about 100 yards away, getting off the road and walking under a tree branch toward a thick patch of woods. 

I could see the upper body, and as it was walking, it covered a lot of ground in between, you know, something that you and I would cover in two to three minutes.  This thing was enormous, with solid charcoal-black hair and four-foot-wide shoulders. 

I could see like a shine to it, you could see the muscle mass to it.  Judging by the branches I saw it go under, and going back to that, it was at least 9-feet tall.  It had to duck down a little bit to bet under that branch.  The branch stood at 8 feet and 4 inches.  I never got a good look at the face, which is the most disappointing part of it.  I want to know what the face looks like.  I could see the cheek, the cheek was covered. 

I was so scared that I dropped my hiking equipment, $200 worth, and left it behind.
I was too scared.  I was not about to go to look in the snow.  I just wanted out of there.

This is not the first time that a cryptid has been spotted in the area; the Connecticut Hill Monster has been reported off and on for the past couple of decades.  But this is the first recent sighting I've been aware of.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

I've had this story sent my way twice, and one of the people who sent it to me is my pal John Sullivan, who does the wonderful weekly radio program Skeptical Sunday.  John is not only a skeptic, he's also a biologist, which makes him the kind of guy you want by your side in this kind of investigation.  Once again, we have the piss-your-pants-and-have-a-stroke potential of running into Bigfoot in the woods, so I'm hoping John and I can get together soon and have a look around.

So Podunk and environs turns out to be a happenin' place of late, affording me a not-to-be-missed opportunity to prove that I'm more than an Armchair Skeptic.  I'll definitely report here what happens during my ghost-hunting and squatch-seeking adventures.

Unless the results are positive, in which case my next-of-kin can take care of it.

Secular indoctrination and spoon-bending

It used to be that when I was accused (usually because I teach evolution) of "indoctrinating students into a secular, materialist, rationalist worldview," that it would set my teeth on edge.

And yes, the above is an actual quote.  However, the same charge has been levied against me, and other science teachers, using a variety of verbiage.  Teachers should not teach students to doubt, to question authority.  By adhering to an evidence-based, rationalistic approach, we are calling into question faith and spirituality.

Worse still, public schools are "atheist factories."

On one hand, I question the extent to which teachers really can create seismic shifts in students' worldviews.  With very few exceptions, the kids in my classes who come in religious, agnostic, and atheist leave my classes (respectively) religious, agnostic, and atheist.  It takes more than forty minutes a day for 180 days to undermine an entire belief system, even if that was my goal (which, incidentally, it isn't).

On the other hand, though, the critics do have a point.  We science teachers are promoting rationalism as a path to knowledge.  And we damn well should be.  Rationalism has provided us with the medical advances, engineering, and technology that the majority of us are happy enough to use without question, regardless of the fact that they were produced by a methodology that has nothing whatsoever to do with faith or divine inspiration.  If you want to call what I do "indoctrination into a rationalistic worldview," then have at it.

What's funny is that a lot of the extremely religious get their knickers in a twist if someone steps in and tries to teach students a different spiritual, non-evidence-based set of beliefs.  It's okay to let religion into public schools, apparently, as long as it's the right religion.

As an example, consider the odd bedfellows that have resulted from decision by the Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics to allow a self-styled psychic to come in and teach telepathy and telekinesis to high school students.  (Hat tip to the wonderful site Doubtful News for this story.)

Here's how the story was reported:

Mentalist and mind reader Gerard Senehi recently partnered with the Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics to offer classes meant to help students develop life skills like self-confidence and answer tough questions about themselves, such as “Do you have the courage to pursue what you really care about?” and “How much do you have a sense of direction and purpose in life?” 

The program, called The QUESTion Project, kicked off with a Dec. 19 performance at the school where Senehi dazzled students with tricks like bending wine glasses, spinning spoons in other people’s hands and making accurate predictions about the future. 

Edward Tom, the school’s founding principal, was also impressed by how well Senehi managed to keep the students’ attention. "The whole purpose wasn’t to give kids a magic show," he said. "It was to let them know the power of belief, that there are so many things that are possible…"

No, Mr. Tom, you're right about that.  It isn't a magic show.  In a magic show, the magician is clear on the fact that what (s)he is doing is an illusion.  Senehi claims that what he's doing is real.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

This has appalled a number of people, including the very religious (who don't want evil stuff like psychic powers influencing teenagers) and secular rationalists (who are appalled that such claptrap is being presented as reality, and in a science center, no less).  Both, of course, are right, although in different senses.  Such a performance could influence students' beliefs.  Stage magicians (which Senehi is, even if he won't admit it) can be terribly convincing.  They only become famous if they're good enough that you can't see how they do what they do.  Presented with an inexplicable trick, and the message, "You can learn how to do this, if you try hard enough!", I can see how people (not just teenagers!) could get suckered.

Which is why people like Senehi should not be allowed anywhere near school-age children.  Adults sometimes have a hard enough time telling fact from fantasy; encouraging teenagers to further blur this distinction is irresponsible.

Magician and skeptic Jamy Ian Swiss put it most succinctly.  In a piece about Senehi, Swiss said, "If you tell the audience you’re doing anything other than tricks, …you’re not doing entertainment. You’re doing religion."

And to anyone who objects to his characterization of what Senehi is doing as religion, allow me to point out that as a set of bizarre claims with zero evidence, psychic beliefs are clearly religion.

So to the people who would eliminate "rationalist indoctrination" from science classrooms, let me ask: what would you put in its place?  If we allow spiritualistic and faith-based beliefs to guide what we do in schools, we have stepped onto that fabled slippery slope.  Do you really want kids to sit through presentations by people who claim that they can learn how to do telepathy and bend spoons with their minds?  Are you honestly comfortable with allowing any and all faith-based belief systems to guide instruction?

If not, maybe the safest thing for all of us is to let science teachers keep on with the rationalism, and leave the faith stuff -- of all flavors -- to the homes and the churches.

Allahu akbar, Frosty!

Islam has had some serious problem with its PR in the past couple of weeks, what with the Charlie Hebdo massacre, a series of Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria that left an estimated 2,000 dead, a horrific incident involving a ten-year-old female suicide bomber, and the flogging of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi for "insulting Islam."

So let's do a little thought experiment, here.  You're a prominent Muslim cleric, and you read the litany of bad news.  You're concerned not only about how the rest of the world views your belief system, but how Muslims themselves must feel when they hear about the atrocities being done in the name of their religion.  What do you do?

1. You make a strongly-worded statement repudiating violence in the name of religion.
2. You put pressure on religious and governmental leaders to consider human rights reform.
3. You encourage your followers to donate money to groups that are fighting terrorism.
4. You open a discussion of the passages in the Qu'ran that encourage such behavior.
5. You issue a fatwa against snowmen.

If you picked #5, you understand the leadership of Islam all too well.  Muslim leaders have been far more willing to mess around with prohibitions against random behaviors than to stand up against the horrors perpetrated in Islam's name.  (Some leaders have done so, fortunately; there have been several Islamic groups who have spoken out, especially regarding Charlie Hebdo.)

But in theocratic Saudi Arabia, mostly what we've heard on the topic of human rights, freedom of speech, and eliminating terrorism is: silence.

But woe unto you if you build a snowman.  Saudi cleric Sheikh Mohammed Saleh al-Munajjid said that it was forbidden to build a snowman, "even in fun:"

It is not permitted to make a statue out of snow, even by way of play and fun...  God has given people space to make whatever they want which does not have a soul, including trees, ships, fruits, buildings and so on.

So now snowmen have souls?  What, did this guy think that Frosty the Snowman was a historical documentary?

While some Muslims are shaking their heads about how ridiculous this is, there are a lot who apparently think this is perfectly reasonable.  "May God preserve the scholars, for they enjoy sharp vision and recognize matters that even Satan does not think about," one responder wrote.  "It (building snowmen) is imitating the infidels, it promotes lustiness and eroticism."

My opinion is that if seeing snowmen makes you feel lusty and erotic, you have an entirely different problem, unrelated to matters of religion.

[image courtesy of photographer Thomas Cook and the Creative Commons]

And seriously.  Do they really have that big a snowman problem in Saudi Arabia?  It's no wonder that Satan hasn't thought about it.  Last I looked, Saudi Arabia is basically a big desert.  Prohibiting snowmen in Saudi Arabia is about as reasonable as me, up here in the arctic wasteland of upstate New York, issuing a fatwa against palm trees.

But rationality has little to do with this.  If Islamic leaders keep tightening the grip on every move their followers make, even in realms that have little to do with reality, it'll obviate them of the need to focus on the real issues.  It reinforces the message that Allah is watching, that he knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows when you've been bad or good, so be good or you get 1,000 lashes on your bare back.

Even if it does convince most of the rest of the world that the worldview is, at its basis, completely insane.

An aura of divergent thinking

First, let me just say that I love my students.

Far from conforming to the slacker, disaffected teenage stereotype, I find that nearly all of my students are natural questioners, are interested in the world around them, and are willing to be engaged with learning.  We as teachers have only to hook on to that energy, avoid putting a bell jar over the flame of their inborn curiosity, and half the battle over "higher standards and academic achievement" will be won.

Take, for example, my Critical Thinking classes.  An ongoing exercise we do once weekly through the entire semester is media analysis; students submit an analysis of an example from popular media, as an illustration of some concept we've studied during the previous weeks.  We look in turn at print media, audio/visual media, and online media, but other than that, there are few strictures on what they can turn in to receive credit for this project.

It's amazing what they find.  Once tuned in to a few basic principles of media analysis, high schoolers rapidly become adept at sorting fact from fiction from outright bullshit.

As an example of the last-mentioned, take a look at the site one of my students submitted last week, a little gem called Reading Auras.  In particular, she drew my attention to the page, "Aura Dating for Seniors -- A New Way of Looking at Love."

If you're sitting there thinking, "No... that can't mean what it sounds like...", unfortunately, you're wrong.  This is precisely what it sounds like.

This site is suggesting that senior citizens find new love by comparing the color of their aura with that of a potential significant other.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

It starts out in a remarkably condescending fashion:

One of the more interesting applications of this knowledge is in dating, with special emphasis on senior dating.  Seniors are less familiar with the Internet and because of this they might not be able to give an accurate or complete description of their personality details and likes and dislikes.  Neither they would [sic] be able to describe too well what they are looking for in a partner.

Now that we've established that once you pass the age of 65, you are no longer articulate, let's take a look at the solution:

The aura personality map, in this case, would work like an automatic scanner that reads and translates all that the seniors could not put in words.  Besides, matching the auras is much more accurate in finding the right partner than any other method.  This is because each color of the aura would provide information about the person that would be a better guide to find the right person. 

The relationships that come out from aura colors matching are more meaningful for it is based on the vital energy sources.  This means there would be a better chemistry between the matched senior dates right from the beginning, which in turn would have better chances of developing into a long term significant relationship.

Well, this is correct in one sense; if I was re-entering the Dating Game, I'd want to know right away if a potential partner thought I had a nice-looking aura, because no way would I want to become romantically involved with someone who sees nonexistent halos around people.

On this site, we also find out that it's not a good thing if you have a brown aura, unless it's "caramel brown," which means that you're "fun;" that you can compliment your aura readings with reading a person's tongue, because the tongue's "size, shape, color, and topography" tells you a lot (for example, if your tongue is blue, you have circulatory problems); that your pets have auras, and that if you tune in to your pet's aura (s)he will "show more pleasure than usual;" and that children are naturally adept at seeing auras, and we should encourage them in this rather than dissuading them by silly old narrow-minded rationalist nonsense like teaching them to sort fact from fantasy.

This last-mentioned is at least within hailing distance of the truth.  There is one skill at which children outstrip most adults by a mile, and that's divergent, creative thinking.  A study by Robert McGarvey, which gained traction largely because of its use as an example of how schools fail by the phenomenal speaker Sir Ken Robinson, shows that by one measure of divergent thinking, preschoolers score 84% -- and second graders an average of 10%.  This is, Robinson says, because by second grade, kids have already learned "that there is one answer, and it's in the back of the book -- but don't look."

In my experience, though, you can resurrect this long-suppressed ability for creative critical thinking, but it requires teachers to do something that many of us find pretty scary -- to let go of the reins some. Turned loose on academics, most students can re-engage their curiosity and capacity for divergent thinking quickly.  Take, for example, a recent study that showed that when students are given the opportunity to make choices about what they read for their classes, they read more often and more enthusiastically.  Who wouldn't?  It doesn't take a Rhodes Scholar to see that autonomy is a motivator.  As literacy advocate Pam Allyn put it, "You become a lifelong reader when you're able to make choices about the books you read, and when you love the books you read.  You tend to get better at something you love to do."

But our response, as educators, has been to tighten down more, to place more restrictions on how students learn and on how they demonstrate that they have learned, all behind the rallying cry of "raising standards."

As my student's analysis of the aura website showed, when given the opportunity to dig into a topic, students are capable of doing so with gusto.  My student's presentation of her media submission to the class began with the statement, "This may be the most extreme example of confirmation bias that I've ever seen -- these people are literally seeing what they want to see."

But are we, as educators, doing the inverse of that -- not seeing what we would prefer not to see?  More student autonomy, more divergent thinking, more ways of getting to answers, more ways of expressing them?

And how much of that reluctance comes from our conviction that there should be only a single way to learning?

It seems fitting to end with a quote from Sir Ken Robinson:

We have to go from what is essentially an industrial model of education, a manufacturing model, which is based on linearity and conformity and batching people.  We have to move to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture.  We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process; it's an organic process.  And you cannot predict the outcome of human development.  All you can do, like a farmer, is create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.